united states gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. >> so, no comment on the past. we don't still do it, we won't do it again, but why were we doing it before, and who knew about it? the "wall street journal" reports now that the nsa was doing this basically on their own? the white house cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking ms. merkel. this quote suggests that president barack obama went nearly five years as president without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of other world leaders. one senior u.s. official tells "the journal" that the current practice has been for these types of surveillance decisions to be made at the agency level. "these decisions are made at nsa." at nsa? so, that one agency just gets to decide on its own that it's going to bug the cell phones of world leaders for years? and what, just hope the president doesn't find out about it? you guys are making the call on your own? what's going on here? and is the nsa under anyone's control? joining us now is my friend, ron sust yin, put